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Official Urges Arrest of 2 Darfur Suspects

Sudanese refugees from southern Darfur collected water Wednesday at a camp in the northeastern Central African Republic.Credit
David Lewis/Reuters

UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 5 — The lead prosecutor of the International Criminal Court urged the Security Council on Wednesday to put pressure on Sudan to arrest and surrender two men indicted by the tribunal last spring for war crimes in Darfur.

Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the tribunal’s chief prosecutor, said one of the two, Ahmad Haroun, a government minister, was at the center of new violence against civilians and was being shielded by the Sudanese authorities.

He said the second man, Ali Kushayb, a leader of the government-backed Arab janjaweed militias, had been detained in Sudan but then released “for lack of evidence.”

The janjaweed fighters are held responsible for attacks on black African villagers in a campaign has caused at least 200,000 deaths and driven 2.5 million people from their land.

Not only has Sudan not cooperated in turning over Mr. Haroun, it has named him its humanitarian affairs minister, and put him in charge of hearing human rights complaints from Darfur victims and of monitoring the African Union-United Nations peacekeeping force scheduled to deploy in Darfur next month, Mr. Moreno-Ocampo noted.

“Ahmad Haroun, a man charged with 50 counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes, should not be entrusted his victims’ safety,” Mr. Moreno-Ocampo said. “He must be arrested.”

Rights groups following the Darfur crisis have taken a keen interest in the Haroun case, and at a lunch at The New York Times with reporters and editors on Monday, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was asked why he had not spoken out more forcefully about it.

“There seems to have been a misunderstanding when it comes to the specific issue of Mr. Haroun,” Mr. Ban said. “It is true that I have not dealt with this matter in a public forum, but I have already spoken twice to President Bashir, in my telephone talks with him and in my private meetings with him when I was in Khartoum.”

Mr. Ban saw Omar Hassan al-Bashir, the Sudanese president, in Khartoum during a four-day visit to Sudan in September.

Mr. Ban said his actions were in keeping with his decision on taking office in January not to follow the example of some of his predecessors, but instead to refrain from making critical statements in public about governments and national leaders. “Certain issues you can address in a public forum, but when it is necessary, I think it is more effective dealing in a behind-the-scenes, tête-à-tête manner,” he said.

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Richard Dicker, the director of the international justice program at Human Rights Watch, said Wednesday, “I think the secretary general has erred in placing so much reliance on quiet diplomacy with a government that is hellbent on obstructing justice and peacekeeping.”

Because of the intransigence of Sudanese officials, Mr. Moreno-Ocampo said, he was opening an investigation into which senior officials were protecting Mr. Haroun and enabling him to carry on activities that were fostering new violence.

“My office will proceed to investigate who is bearing the greatest responsibility for ongoing attacks against civilians,” Mr. Moreno-Ocampo said. “Who is maintaining Haroun in a position to commit crimes? Who is instructing him?”

In response, Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamad, Sudan’s ambassador to the United Nations, told reporters that Mr. Moreno-Ocampo had produced “the mother of all fabrications.”

“Ocampo showed today his moral and professional bankruptcy,” Mr. Mohamad said. “Indeed moral because he told fabrications that you can never imagine, and professional because he left aside his legal framework, so to speak, and resorted instead to politicizing the whole issue.”

Sudan Absent From Rice Talks

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, Dec. 5 (AP) — Officials from Sudan’s ruling party, which is accused of backing militias behind the atrocities in Darfur, did not appear Wednesday at talks here with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

The Sudanese government’s official explanation was that it had received invitations too late to rearrange schedules. Ms. Rice, in the Ethiopian capital for meetings with African leaders, nonetheless pressed for peace.

She also called for quick deployment of African peacekeepers to Somalia, where an Islamic insurgency accused of links to Al Qaeda has killed thousands of civilians. The peacekeepers would bolster a small Ugandan force and replace Ethiopian troops.

The United Nations says Somalia is facing the worst humanitarian crisis in Africa, with millions displaced from their homes by the continuing violence.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A12 of the New York edition with the headline: Official Urges Arrest of 2 Darfur Suspects. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe